Resonance photogeneration of hot electrons through Tamm surface states.

Internal surface photoemission of electrons from 1D crystal into a barrier with participation of Tamm state (TS) at the interface crystal barrier is considered theoretically for the first time, to the best of our knowledge. It is shown that resonant tunneling of electrons through a TS could lead to substantial enhancement of the quantum efficiency and lowering the red border to a value defined by the TS. In contrast to the Fowler quadratic law, the photocurrent scales linearly with photon energy near the red border. The results suggest that the efficiency of hot electron generation with plasmonic metal nanoparticles could reach several tens of percent, which is very attractive for application in energy conversion technologies such as water splitting.

Landau broadening of plasmonic resonances in the Mie theory.

Landau damping in the metal nanosphere is considered beyond the quasistatic approximation with the use of the exact Mie theory when an incident plane wave can excite not only the dipole mode but also higher-order modes. In resonance approximation, when one considers excitation of a single mode, the analytical formula for the Landau damping coefficient for various modes has been derived. It was demonstrated that the simultaneous excitation of several eigenmodes, which are overlapped in the frequency domain, can lead to substantial correction of the Landau damping coefficients for the modes.

On collective Rabi splitting in nanolasers and nano-LEDs.

We analytically calculate the optical emission spectrum of nanolasers and nano-LEDs based on a model of many incoherently pumped two-level emitters in a cavity. At low pump rates, we find two peaks in the spectrum for large coupling strengths and numbers of emitters. We interpret the double-peaked spectrum as a signature of collective Rabi splitting, and discuss the difference between the splitting of the spectrum and the existence of two eigenmodes. We show that an LED will never exhibit a split spectrum, even though it can have distinct eigenmodes. For systems where the splitting is possible, we show that the two peaks merge into a single one when the pump rate is increased. Finally, we compute the linewidth of the systems, and discuss the influence of inter-emitter correlations on the lineshape.

Spontaneous Hot-Electron Light Emission from Electron-Fed Optical Antennas.

Nanoscale electronics and photonics are among the most promising research areas providing functional nanocomponents for data transfer and signal processing. By adopting metal-based optical antennas as a disruptive technological vehicle, we demonstrate that these two device-generating technologies can be interfaced to create an electronically driven self-emitting unit. This nanoscale plasmonic transmitter operates by injecting electrons in a contacted tunneling antenna feedgap. Under certain operating conditions, we show that the antenna enters a highly nonlinear regime in which the energy of the emitted photons exceeds the quantum limit imposed by the applied bias. We propose a model based upon the spontaneous emission of hot electrons that correctly reproduces the experimental findings. The electron-fed optical antennas described here are critical devices for interfacing electrons and photons, enabling thus the development of optical transceivers for on-chip wireless broadcasting of information at the nanoscale.

Landau Damping in Hybrid Plasmonics.

The Landau damping (LD) mechanism of the localized surface plasmon (LSP) decay is studied for the hybrid nanoplasmonic (metal core/dielectric shell) structures. It is shown that LD in hybrid structures is strongly affected by the permittivity and the electron effective mass in the dielectric shell in accordance with previous observations by Kreibig, and the strength of LD can be enhanced by an order of magnitude for some combinations of permittivity and effective mass. The physical reason for this effect is identified as an electron spillover into the dielectric where the electric field is higher than that in the metal and the presence of quasi-discrete energy levels in the dielectric. The theory indicates that the transition absorption at the metal-dielectric interface is a dominant contribution to LD in such hybrid structures. Thus, by judicious selection of dielectric material and its thickness, one can engineer decay rates and hot carrier production for important applications, such as photodetection and photochemistry.

Excitation of plasmonic nanoantennas by nonresonant and resonant electron tunnelling.

A rigorous theory of photon emission generated by inelastic electron tunnelling inside the gap of plasmonic nanoantennas is developed. The disappointingly low efficiency of the electrical excitation of surface plasmon polaritons in these structures can be increased by orders of magnitude when a resonant tunnelling structure is incorporated inside the gap. A resonant tunnelling assisted surface plasmon emitter may become a key element in future electrically-driven plasmonic nanocircuits.

Internal photoemission from plasmonic nanoparticles: comparison between surface and volume photoelectric effects.

We study the emission of photoelectrons from plasmonic nanoparticles into a surrounding matrix. We consider two mechanisms of electron emission from the nanoparticles--surface and volume ones--and use models for these two mechanisms which allow us to obtain analytical results for the photoelectron emission rate from a nanoparticle. Calculations have been carried out for a step potential at the surface of a spherical nanoparticle, and a simple model for the hot electron cooling has been used. We highlight the effect of the discontinuity of the dielectric permittivity at the nanoparticle boundary in the surface mechanism, which leads to a substantial (by ∼5 times) increase of the internal photoelectron emission rate from a nanoparticle compared to the case when such a discontinuity is absent. For a plasmonic nanoparticle, a comparison of the two photoeffect mechanisms was undertaken for the first time which showed that the surface photoeffect can in the general case be larger than the volume one, which agrees with the results obtained for a flat metal surface first formulated by Tamm and Schubin in their pioneering development of a quantum-mechanical theory of photoeffect in 1931. In accordance with our calculations, this possible predominance of the surface effect is based on two factors: (i) effective cooling of hot carriers during their propagation from the volume of the nanoparticle to its surface in the scenario of the volume mechanism and (ii) strengthening of the surface mechanism through the effect of the discontinuity of the dielectric permittivity at the nanoparticle boundary. The latter is stronger at relatively lower photon energies and correspondingly is more substantial for internal photoemission than for an external one. We show that in the general case, it is essential to take both mechanisms into account in the development of devices based on the photoelectric effect and when considering hot electron emission from a plasmonic nanoantenna.